Monday, 24 August 2015

Measuring ROI on your sms advertising campaign

ROI (return on investment) is an important metric, and quite often we get asked what the average success rate of SMS marketing is.

This is a hard question to answer. Closest answer is; it depends.

This is not very helpful I know, but there's no average success rate of anything, as there are too many variables.

But one thing stands true: The ROI bit is up to you and how good your offer and your audience is.

Various marketing bodies like ADMA say that an "average response" for direct mail campaigns is 1%, telemarketing may be 5%, faxing may be 3%, email around 5%, and SMS can be anywhere from 5-15%. But these are just averages.

Response could mean signups, calls to your business, clicks to your website. This is why with any marketing campaign, you need to have a clear call to action...this means "where do I go now?".

It's also good to measure "conversions"...this usually means "how many bought my product".

And of those who responded, how many converted? If this is low, then you have a problem with your offer.

Different metrics.

In the case of an SMS campaign, if you are a retailer, you may want to send a text message to customers on your mobile marketing list inviting them to a VIP sale. A good way to measure this is to ask customers to show the message to staff at the register to redeem the offer, and get staff to keep tabs

Maybe you're running an event and want to get some registrations. You can add a link in to your text message pointing to your website or a site like Eventbrite where they can view info and book tickets via Eventbrite.

If you're a restaurant and want to fill a quiet night, text customers with a mouth-watering offer: "Chef has just made amazing Tiramisu. Come in for dinner tonight and the Tiramisu is on us! Reply OMG YES to book!"

Timing can come into play. For events obviously you need to give people a bit of lead time. But for the Tiramisu example you could send the text around 2-3pm when people may be thinking what to do for dinner...who could resist a free tiramisu?

A good idea is to benchmark your campaigns against your other advertising. Maybe you have tried direct mail or emails..or if this is your first campaign, you'd likely use this as a benchmark to measure others.

Many businesses use a few different ways to run promotions: Direct mail, email blasts, SMS...Facebook, Instagram...but quite often clients will say to us that SMS gets a good response because people will actually read it, whereas email can sit there all week, direct mail is expensive, and with Facebook or the others, you risk missing those good paying clients because they are too busy to be on social media..but they all have their phone handy!

You are always welcome to call us for advice. We can help you with a mobile webpage too. PH 1300 668 287 or info@smsexpress.com.au and speak with Kerryn